Wind Arrows On A Corner Side

“….
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves
moments before the wind.”

—House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

Ting-Jung Chen develops her solo exhibition Wind Arrows On A Corner Side under her focus on the transmission, memory, and identity interpretation and construction in authority systems.
The exhibition carries on the discussion of the work You Are the Only One I Care About (whisper) (2018), which was shown in Kunsthalle Wien in 2018. The artist traces back to the Cold War and examines the acoustic memory under the strategic attack of psychological warfare and sonic weapons during this period. Chen explores the acoustic territory and body regulation in the context of Kinmen. Due to its geographical position, the island was distributed to different sovereignties, and it was an embattled standoff point on the frontier between sovereignties that both called for unity.
The works proceed from these observations and revolve around the development of physical feedback and psychological feedback of “pressure”, and, subsequently, the tension, resistance, and fusion between diverse communities and territories. They aim to explore the discipline and shaping within power systems and the re-writing of narratives. Chen uses sound and kinetic installations, sculptures, objects, and texts as the medium to amplify tiny moments and their confrontation.
The moment when the audience steps into the exhibition venue, their physical intervention will trigger a chain reaction set by the artist. Voices, memories, and patterns are captured and reiterated in the space. The signals of diminishing information are paradoxically expanded by superimposing and playbacks. They become the volume of sound that resonates with the body. The artist analogized the abstract process of memories and emotions through authority discipline. Like the standardized modules that may vary from reproductions, it has become a labyrinth/kaleidoscope of a dislocated time and space.